About the Writing

First off, I don’t like rules or cages. Maybe someday, someone could gently take my hand and lead me to some guidelines though. My poems and writings tend to present themselves similarly in form, sound and voice. The thing I love to do most in my writing is to paint images; and in reading good writing, to hear and see the images. I strive to be succinct and sensory but sometimes ramble. The poems mostly give a snapshot of an event or problem and evoke emotions that I am feeling, or have felt. Maybe this is a curse, and maybe it is my therapy. I feel it is both. Perhaps I would do better not to relive some of these things. These addictions. Then I think that I am not all that different from other secret decaf coffee drinkers and tobacco free hooka pen smokers. I think maybe someone will relate to this thing, or even like the writing. At other times I wonder if I’m just crazy in it all.

IMPORTANCE OF SEPARATION

Somehow I would like to learn how to separate myself from the work, but I am not sure how to do this, or if I want to. I could create my own literary rule, and then agree to keep it, because I do need boundaries. A blog fits the form. I could also say this for teaching at times. I think I have gotten better in finding some balance in teaching in some ways, but in other ways not so much. As for doing opera with my students. I feel I need to be more honest…which might mean releasing more responsibility to them, and removing myself more. But this is not an easy thing to do, with “fidelity.” I feel a little too shelfish. I want to be part of it. Like parenting, it is a tricky act. Don’t know if this makes any sense. Maybe I should stop trying to find myself, and just be myself, and do my jobs. Or maybe I should just do my job….more teaching and less me….but with joy. Devon says I should be more like my teacher friend, Cheryl, but I can only be me.

PRODUCT VS PROCESS

I mostly feel okay with the written product, not so much with the teaching. I play the odds. Process means more to me than product. But in teaching, product is what administrators want to measure with a fine toothed comb, and parents like to browse while buying lottery tickets in Kingman. In writing, product becomes a living thing… I am alive again and again in the thing I have created. In teaching, product becomes an array of many different things. Sometimes it is distinctively “kid” and their best work, other times product feels like an inquisition, or eviction notice in my mind. I can not celebrate and revel in test scores as my Arizona friend does.

But process….through CREATION or the promise of creating something or teaching someone something that will spark a flame is glorious…kind of like conception….creating a child, or the next best thing for some parents…….recreating themselves in their child…like LIFE TOUCH. Why am I suddenly thinking of a parent from last school year? Now I am feeling not so different from this friend. Seeing it in a photo, on a canvas, on paper, or the computer screen gives it, her, me eternal life.

PUT DOWN THE DUCKY!

Also weird is this…..It’s difficult for me to read a finished piece without over-analyzing, and trying to rewrite it. Difficult to leave the poem alone. I would like to be able to do this better. Set boundaries. Find closure. Just stop it! In the words of Ernie on Sesame Street, ” I gotta put down the ducky…..gotta leave the duck alone.” Have you heard of mind dumping? It is something I was reminded of in my aura class last year when doing an eyes closed, don’t lift pen from paper exercise; and is found in Morning Pages in the Writers Way….because not everything written is really all that important, or meant to be read, published, or even saved……like this, for instance. I am sick of hearing myself as you probably are also….. but continue on. Feel free to leave at any time.

PLANNING VS WINGING IT IN WRITING

The writing, and the frequency of it cycles. I can go for ages without writing anything at all, and then at other times…..I can’t stop, can’t sleep, can’t eat…until I make myself sick with it…Amadeus like. It is almost like I’m in love with it…and I love when the Muse comes to me.

I will say it is IMPERATIVE that a writer writes. I have forsaken my gift for far too long. It is sooo very important that a writer make sacrifices, and take time every day to write or type down things… and must carry paper and pen, Iphone, tablet, whatever it takes to capture the impressions. Otherwise…..I don’t typically start out with a plan. Surprised? Maybe I should try this thing called PLANNING!

CREATION IS MY FAVORITE RECREATION & TAKES FLIGHT

Mostly I wing it. I begin with an open ended giant block of time. Summer is best, but learn to snatch and grab when and wherever possible. Like the last air bender, start with a feeling, start creating, and then much like adding water to watercolor paint, what I have in the beginning changes, becomes something new, vibrant, breathing, bleeding, and beautiful. Bob Ross-like. “Happy little cloud” like. I am washed away in a wash of …..more (and sometime less) than it was before, which feels really exciting….until I find myself in an alpha beta “state a mind.” It’s hard to explain, it is intoxicating and I become obsessed with sounds, word choice, word play and images.

To write is to love exquisitely.

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8 Responses to About the Writing

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. – Somerset Maugham.
“Do, or do not. There is no ‘try.’ ” – Jedi Master Yoda
ee cummings wrote with no punctuation. Faulkner wrote the longest sentences. Hemingway wrote the shortest. What, dear lady, will you write when you have stopped thinking about it?

Thank you, JT! You put me at ease with these comments. Not sure why you want to do this. Good to hear someone refer to me as dear. This word “dear” a kind of trigger. Hmm. For some reason I am suddenly thinking on James Joyce and Portrait of an Artist. “Close your eyes and see.” I have not thought on this since undergrad at Texas Lutheran College. Lit. class. A stuffy old Columbia man professor with a pipe. Bahh! Worst teacher ever.

What will I write when I have stopped thinking about it? ha ha…..I will have to think about this 🙂 or not

I am, however, reminded of coaching our h.s. swim team. This is a hobby. Reminded of a book called Imagine by Jonah Lehrer. Something like it takes 10,000 repetitions to fix muscle memory. To rewire it…maybe more. Reminded of Edison’s 10,000 failings before discovering the incondecent light bulb. In the case of swim team….it may take that many tries, likely many more to reteach, in correcting poor technique. To form and to mold. To make and to remake kids into their best. In my 4th grade classroom too. Test results…..inconsequencial really, and yet I am held accountable. At the same time….to Love with all my heart, might, mind strength. I am attempting this in writing without rules, in a blind braile kind of way. Eventually, the best swimmers quit analyzing. They quit thinking. By race time, some learn to “feel” the race. Ultimately the goal is to find the joy in racing regardless of outcome. Outcome will take care of itself in a kind of Law of Attraction way. Dispense with thoughts. Pay no mind to time, or technique, or even surroundings. Just become water, and breath and heart beat. It is visualization maybe. It is beautiful. I have seen this in my son’s butterfly race when he broke the minute mark at BYU/State. I think I have felt this in my own lap swim. Sometimes when I am writing I think I feel this too. But how to move beyond the thinking. The thinking feels so much the vehicle for me. I don’t know yet. Metaphores, images, poetry….yes. I don’t know much. Feel a lot. Think too much. At any rate, I will take Yoda’s advise. Keep trying, but need Jedi training. ha ha In this very moment….I am encouraged that you have faith in me JT. 🙂

I don’t know what I will do. Something written or a thing of movement, no doubt. Once while swimming laps I composed an entire piece. Tricky business. The thing kept getting wet. 🙂 jk….as soon as I finished the work out, I ran to the pool office for yellow pad and paper to record it before it left my brain. This was other worldly.

You are a writer, dear. Clearly. Maybe not published. But what you have written in this blog shows just how talented you are. My blog writing has become as important to me as my writing for publication. To me, it’s as legitimate a venue as getting published in a magazine or book or newspaper. It doesn’t get the same kudos, of course But we have so much more freedom here than in any other venue. There’s great satisfaction in that!